The present invention relates to a liquid ejection apparatus.
An ink jet recording apparatus, which is one type of a liquid ejection apparatus, records data on a medium, such as paper, positioned opposite a recording head which is mounted on a reciprocating carriage and which ejects, onto the medium, ink supplied from an ink storage cartridge.
One type of ink jet recording apparatus is a so-called off-carriage type, which is so designed that, to reduce the load imposed on the carriage, or to reduce the size or the thickness of the apparatus, the ink cartridge is not mounted on the carriage. This type of ink cartridge generally includes an ink pack for storing ink and a case wherein the ink pack is mounted. To supply ink from the ink cartridge to an ink tube, air under pressure is supplied by an air pressure pump to a gap between the case and the ink pack, so that ink, impelled by the pressurized air filling the gap, is forced out of the ink pack and into the ink tube (e.g., see JP-A-2002-200749).
For the off-carriage type ink jet recording apparatus, the number of air tubes, which communicates the air pump with the ink cartridges and through which pressurized air is supplied, corresponds to the number of ink cartridges employed. The number of ink tubes, which communicates the ink cartridges with the recording head, corresponds to the number of ink cartridges employed. Thus, for an assembly operation performed to connect the tubes, a labor intensive effort is required.